Paris Fashion Week Fall 2015: Day Six

Maxi coats – as they were called in the Seventies – swept the runway at the Chloé show, along with all those other happy hippie outfits, from cheesecloth kaftans to colourful Mexican shawls.

Of course designer Clare Waight Keller was not using flea-market pieces, or even aiming to revitalise the hippy-de-luxe wardrobe of the Yves Saint Laurent years.

Instead these clothes were light, elegant and surely beautifully made, like the short lingerie-style dress in chocolate silk with lacy adornment, or the long purple chiffon dress with dangling silken cords.

Clare is convinced that this is the Chloé girl today – still a free spirit after all these years, an independent attitude perhaps passed down the generations.

But here lies Chloé’s problem: are the dress codes the same for the digital generation, whom I rarely see in a tailored woollen coat or jacket or trouser suit? Bring on the down bomber jackets and jeans!

There were some cute denim shorts, along with others in what looked like leather with Python effects. Another checked wool waistcoat and shorts looked cool.

The above outfits must have been designed for Autumn 2015 in St Barts – or perhaps to wear under chic shearling coats.

I admired much of the work with its concise but fluid cuts: a grey flannel short cape with batwing arms, and a checked sweep-the-floor coat were both arresting.

But as a fashion editor I have to ask myself, who is the intended customer? Not really the young and carefree – because they would not have the money and are scrabbling to get jobs. Yummy mummies perhaps? And ones with a driver, because packing kids and an ankle-length coat into a car would be a Herculean task.

Fashion must not only look right but feel right for its times. This Chloé show had fine pieces in a close edit, but the overall message was blurred.

Givenchy: Mexicana Victoriana

At Givenchy, Riccardo Tisci gave the show of his life – powerful and tender, rich and brave – it was a sumptuous summing up of his ten years at the house.

There to join him in a show space dotted with pinball machines and a runway red carpet were the perpetual fashion couple Kim and Kanye, plus Katy Perry, Jessica Chastain, and so many more.

But for once, all eyes were not on the front row, instead they were on Riccardo’s runway, which mixed with exceptional dexterity three separate elements: Parisian perfection, British Victoriana, and Mexican chola street gangs – with a stylised version of their jewellery accessorising the show in an alarming but mesmerising way.

“The girls from Mexico are very stylish and very Latin – which I love,” said the Italian Tisci. “I am obsessed with street style – it’s my aesthetic. And I was always obsessed with Victoriana. So many other designers have done it – but I found my way.”

The result was an underlying combination of sexuality – with corsets built into little black dresses – and menace, with glittering ear pieces and nose rings where ruby coloured stones looked like drops of blood.

The tailoring traced the body so closely that it fulfilled Tisci’s comment that “couture has taught me a lot.” But not all the pieces were the fitted-like-a-glove trouser suit, its jacket sprinkled with sparkles; nor the rich red velvet dress with a portrait neckline and the corset strips creating a tiny waistline.

There was also plush fur, in different shades of blood red; peacock patterns, straight out of an Art Nouveau decor, but with the intensity of digital printing.

On the feet throughout were Victorian ankle boots of the kind that were undone slowly, seductively, by loose women in an era when a glimpse of stocking was something shocking.

In his decade at Givenchy, Tisci has done his fair share of shocking, by bringing the street style of sweatshirts and sportswear into a classic couture house. After the destruction has come an edgy new beauty. It produced a show that will linger like a fine perfume in the fashion air.

John Galliano: A Hint of Deco

I would doff one of Bill Gaytten’s pork-pie hats at the John Galliano show in acknowledgement of his ability to remain cool and calm, as the drama around his former design companion and friend continues to swirl.

As Galliano himself slowly inches back into fashion via the Maison Margiela label, Gaytten just goes on doing what he does so well: the cut and drape of modern clothes.

Of all the floor-sweeping coats worn over a mini dress that I have seen this season, the John Galliano label came up with the most convincing example. It was a brushed purple maxi coat worn over a short black crêpe number.

Gaytten offered his unbeatable technique with cut in a variety of ways – from a silvered, extended jacket to a cropped top that just hit the waist above narrow pants. Short skirts and knee-high boots gave a faint Sixties feeling.

But along with some exquisite decorative techniques, Gaytten has also learned over the years to take a theme and run with it.

The designer said that he started looking at Art Deco motifs and fabrics, but his skill was to drag them across his creative screen so that they looked modern and lively.

I liked abstract flowers in dense greenery as a pattern for a short dress. But other, more digital looks – some of them scattered twinkle effects like snow – were sophisticated.

LVMH is lucky to have such a stalwart trooper to produce a credible collection under the Galliano name.

Emanuel Ungaro in Black and White

“I adore colours and women – and this time I wanted to celebrate black and white as colours, as a party – in an Ungaro way,” said designer Fausto Puglisi.

Emanuel Ungaro’s vivid, frou frou legacy drained of colour!

Really?

But Fausto was not so off message. By limiting himself to these two shades, he showed their variety and diversity in texture, and in the masculine-feminine play of shapes.

The mood board was dedicated to Charlotte Rampling, and to YSL in his tuxedo years. The show opened with a tuxedo, in black with a white collar and high-waisted trousers. A jaunty trilby hat completed the masculine vision.

Was this an ode to the more mannish side of the Sixties and Seventies? Women appearing covered in polka dots, perhaps on a floor-length skirt, were a frequent counterpoint to plain black.

Fausto can cut a mean coat, and those clean, geometric lines balanced the softness of long pleated trousers.

In fact pleats were a major element, set at an angle across the body, or as a miniskirt decorated with more polka dots. A third dimension came as fluffy balls on a string.

Puglisi, like Emanuel Ungaro before him, is quintessentially Italian in his unabashed enthusiasm for body-conscious clothes. But he toned down the sensuality to make the tailored garments more sensitive to the character of 21st-century women.

Although this focus on black and white became what the French call an ‘exercise in style’, it was expertly done and gives a fashion face to a brand that had blanked out.